Prosecutors Wrap Up Case in Manning Trial

By Andrew Aylward

Army Pfc. Bradley Manning is escorted out of a courthouse in Fort Meade, Md., on Tuesday, during the fifth week of his court-martial.

Associated Press

FORT MEADE, Md.—Prosecutors in the court-martial of Army Pfc. Bradley Manning wrapped up their case Tuesday, paving the way for defense lawyers to begin countering allegations that the former Army intelligence analyst aided enemies of the U.S. when he transferred hundreds of thousands of classified documents to antisecrecy group WikiLeaks.

The defense has signaled it will ask the judge hearing the case to dismiss certain charges against Pfc. Manning. It is also expected, when the trial resumes next week, to argue that the 25-year-old, who has acknowledged transferring the documents, shouldn’t receive the stiffest sentence as his intentions weren’t malicious and he didn’t set out to put U.S. security at risk.

Pfc. Manning faces 22 charges, including aiding the enemy, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole.

The defense is expected to submit a motion for dismissal by Thursday, and the prosecution will then have time to respond, presiding judge Col. Denise Lind said Tuesday. Pfc. Manning’s lawyers are scheduled to begin presenting their case Monday.

Military lawyers are expected to seek dismissal of the charge of aiding the enemy on grounds that the prosecution didn’t provide sufficient evidence that Pfc. Manning was aware that classified information could end up in the hands of groups such as al Qaeda.

Pfc. Manning began downloading classified information soon after he was deployed to Iraq in 2009. He was arrested in May 2010, and pleaded guilty last March to several criminal counts, admitting that he provided documents to WikiLeaks, which widely distributed them over the Internet. But Pfc. Manning has continued to fight the most serious charges against him, including aiding the enemy.

The prosecution argued that Pfc. Manning helped U.S. adversaries by transmitting hundreds of thousands of classified documents, including reports on the status of the war in Afghanistan. The prosecution team also tried to show that both al Qaeda and al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula were eager to obtain the documents.

On Monday, the court heard testimony that some of the documents were later found at Osama bin Laden’s Pakistan compound during the 2011 raid that killed the al Qaeda leader. That testimony is central to the allegation that Pfc. Manning aided the enemy.

The prosecution’s final witness, Daniel Lewis, a counterintelligence agent at the Defense Intelligence Agency, testified Tuesday about counterintelligence and espionage. Mr. Lewis wasn’t recognized as an expert on the value of all classified documents in the trial, as prosecutors had hoped, though he was permitted to offer his opinion on the worth of specific pieces of information, according to guidelines set out by Judge Lind in a classified oral statement.

Determining the importance of the documents that were provided to WikiLeaks is crucial for prosecutors, who want to show the judge that Pfc. Manning’s information was valuable to U.S. adversaries.